Wondering How You Could Feel Better?

You are designed to feel all emotions because you’re human. If you do that, you will feel better. Somewhere along the way, though, you were taught that feeling emotions is a negative thing you should fear. So instead of feeling your emotions, what you often do is react to them, push them out of the way, or avoid them by choosing to do something else that covers them up.

When you do this, you feel better, or you think you do, in the moment. The emotions are temporarily masked and you move on thinking you avoided them or got rid of them. The interesting thing is that they didn’t actually go away. They got pushed down or covered up, but they weren’t processed. So they show up in different ways or show up stronger in other situations.

When you approach your feelings like this you’re building the skills of avoiding or resisting your emotions. This skill you are building is called buffering. Buffering is when you choose to do something to avoid your real feelings so you don’t actually have to feel them. The actions you choose might be things like overeating, over drinking, overspending, or overworking.

Those actions all have negative consequences. So, you end up having to deal with the reality of the negative results you create when you aren’t willing to feel your feelings.

If you really want to learn to feel better, there are a few truths you need to understand.

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Four Truths About Your Emotions

1. Everything you choose to do, or not do, is because of how you think it’s going to make you feel.
2. Your thoughts create your feelings.
3. The things outside of you do not create your feelings.
4. You are in control of every feeling you have.

Most people think that when they finally achieve something they will be happy. When they finally lose the weight, life will be amazing. When they have more money, they will finally have the life they want. But, those thoughts aren’t true.

I think about how often I’ve lost weight only to realize that losing weight didn’t solve my problems. Then I felt disappointment which led me to sabotage my results. When the reality sets in and the negative emotions are still there, people often self sabotage. They aren’t prepared for the negative feelings because they thought those would no longer exist.

Remember, as humans we are meant to have all emotions. We think we are meant to be happy all the time. So, when we aren’t happy all the time we think something is wrong with us. That is simply not true!

What we need to learn is that having all emotions is part of the human experience.

Then we need to learn to process our emotions so we can feel better on purpose.

Four Steps to Processing Your Emotions and Feeling Better

1. Notice your emotion and name it.

• Noticing your emotion and facing it is empowering. When you do this you’re building the skill of teaching yourself how to understand what’s happening in your body and your mind.
• Make sure to keep your emotion to one word. Naming your emotion might look like telling yourself which emotion you are feeling. For example you might say, “That’s anxiety,” “I’m feeling insecure,” or “I’m feeling impatient.”

2. Describe your emotion.

• Consider describing your emotion to a child who hasn’t ever experienced that emotion before. Describe how it feels in your body with great detail. Here are some questions you can answer:
  • Where is it?
  • Is it slow or fast?
  • Is it in your chest, head, or shoulders?
  • Is your heart racing?
  • Does your body feel heavy?
  • Is your mind racing?
  • Is it tense?
  • Where?

3. Allow your emotion.

• You have been taught to fear and avoid your emotions. You do all kinds of things to avoid having to feel them. This means you also avoid taking actions that could lead to creating your extraordinary life. You’ve sold yourself on the idea that you can’t handle feeling negative emotions.
• The worst thing that is going to happen is you’re going to feel an emotion. An emotion is just a vibration in your body. You might feel embarrassed, for example. But, the worst thing that you’re going to experience is the feeling of embarrassment. If you allow it, it won’t last very long and you’ll move on. But if you continue to push your feelings down or avoid them, they’ll last forever.
• Practicing this will help you move beyond the fear of your emotions and it will teach you that you can handle anything since the worst that can happen is that you’ll experience an emotion.

4. Get clear on what’s causing your emotion.

• Every emotion you have is because of a thought you have. If you want to understand why you’re feeling the way you’re feeling, you need to get clear on what you’re thinking.
• One way to do this is to create quiet time for yourself. Journaling and meditating are two exercises that help you to be quiet with yourself and listen to your thoughts. When you know the thoughts you’re thinking, you can purposely choose to think different thoughts.
• Remember that you are creating every emotion you have with your thoughts. This is great news because it also means you can create more of the emotions you want to feel by choosing to think more empowering thoughts.

One Last Note!

I think the skill of processing emotions is one of the most powerful skills we can learn. When you build your understanding of this process and you practice this, the possibilities for your life are endless. You will know that you can do anything because you’ll know you can handle any emotion that presents itself to you.

If you’re not afraid of how you’re going to feel, then there won’t be any action you aren’t willing to take for yourself. This is the skill that opens every possibility for you to intentionally create the life you want.

Helping my clients learn to manage their emotions is one of the key tools I teach in my 1:1 coaching program. If you want help with this, sign up for a complimentary consultation call by leaving a comment below.

What are you waiting for? Commit to learning to manage your emotions so you can finally take the actions that will help you create the life you want to live.

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